Four Women Connor Never Had, and One That He Did
by SpookyChild
Summary: Connor's life is a series of fairy tales, with one very real ending.
1. Fred

**Four Women Connor Never Had, and One That He Did**

_Chapter One: Fred_

The first time Connor masturbates is after Fred cleans the gash in his stomach. They had gone up against a particularly nasty demon with forty tentacles and seemingly no head, and with Angel at the bottom of the ocean, Connor was the Number One Gross Demon Fighter. Not that he minded (Connor loved a little blood shed in between playing his GameBoy), but his fighting skills never involved much thinking. It was basically hack, slash, chop off head. So when there was no head involved, it tended to make Connor a bit... distracted.

"Hold still," Fred says exasperatedly, placing a thin hand on his chest to steady him. "I know you have super healing and all, but if your guts fall out all over the lobby I think we might have a problem on our hands."

"I'm fine," Connor grounds out before his breath hitches; he had spent most of his life in Quortoth, and as one might suspect, there were no girls in Quortoth. Now he was in L.A. and surrounded by women all the time, most of them barely wearing anything, and it tended to make any normal seventeen year old boy crazy. And Connor wasn't any normal seventeen year old boy.

After the wound is stitched and bandaged (which involved a lot of leaning over and a hand placed on his thigh for balance), Connor barely makes it to his bathroom before collapsing on the floor, hand working furiously in his pants, as if that was the solution to all the pain and stress he had ever gone through. The pressure builds and he clenches his jaw so hard he thinks his teeth are going to break, and when he comes he nearly cracks his head on the side of the tub. Afterwards, Fred comes up to find him sitting on his bed and playing his GameBoy, and she gives him his bologna sandwich and kisses him on the head and doesn't even notice when his eyes follow her ass out the door.

--

The second time Connor masturbates is the first time he hears Gunn and Fred having sex. Although he's never seen what sex looks like and he has only ever had a rough description from his father of what sex was, he knows exactly what Fred and Gunn are doing. And he knows this because of the way it makes him feel.

They're not being loud and he can even hear Fred trying to hush them up at times with the words "don't want him to hear" and "he's only a kid", and Gunn just laughs and there's a creak from the bed, and he says, "He's got super hearing, Fred. And besides, the kid has to learn about the birds and the bees somehow. I don't think Holtz taught him Sex Ed in between lessons of 'How To Be a Psychopath'. He's probably sleeping, anyway."

Connor can't help but laugh at how wrong that was.

So with every moan and every gasp, Connor sighs and runs his hand faster up and down himself, and with every thrust he bites his tongue and clenches himself harder, and when Fred comes he finds himself coming likewise, and when Gunn whispers that he loves her and would do anything for her, Connor finds himself mouthing the same words.

--

The third time Connor masturbates is in his sleep. He can see her in front of him, with her flowy hair and birdlike shoulders, and her skin is pink and her mouth is red and Connor thinks that he's never seen anything prettier than her, not even in the sex magazines he's stolen from the gas station. Her voice is soft when she says his name, and her hand is warm when it goes to push the hair away from his eyes, and her lips are like velvet when they meet. He's never kissed a girl other than Sunny, but in his dream their kiss is perfect and passionate in all the ways he doesn't know how to be, and when her hands go from his shoulders down to his belt, Connor is finally glad that he came to L.A. to find his father.

Home is where the heart is, and currently, his heart was residing in his pants.

He can feel her going down on him and Connor sighs, and he knows that he's shaking and whimpering in his bed somewhere and it's starting to bother him, because he can hear footsteps down the corridor leading to his room and the only one with footsteps that soft is the girl currently giving him head in his dream. He hears her hesitate by the door and then there is a timid knock and Connor is pulled fully out of his dream, hand gripping himself tightly and grinding into the mattress and Connor can't help but moan.

"Connor?" Her voice is muffled by the door but Connor feels it go straight to his groin, and he moans again and fists harder and he can hear the soft sound of her placing her hand on the doorknob. "Baby, are you okay?" Baby, are you okay? Connor can't even stand it anymore, and he cries out when he comes into his mattress and not a second too soon, because just as he finishes Fred is in the room and she's sitting on the edge of his bed and she's pushing the hair out of his eyes, and Connor's glad that he slept under the sheets that night.

"Sweetheart, are you alright? Were you having a nightmare?" She asks, and her big brown eyes are full of worry and pity, because Connor was very young, and Connor was very lost. Connor doesn't answer, instead he closes his eyes and lets her rub his back to help him fall asleep, and Connor is glad that he's home, because Quortoth never had a Fred.

And when Fred finds out that Connor sunk Angel to the bottom of the ocean, the thing that hurts more than the taser is the betrayal in her eyes. But Connor isn't sorry. The only thing he's sorry about is that after Angel kicks him out of the hotel, he finds an abandoned room somewhere, and it's quiet and Connor finds out that masturbating isn't as much fun when all you had was a head full of bad memories.

--

(A/N)

hope you like it. :)


	2. Dawn

**Four Women Connor Never Had, and One That He Did**

_Chapter Two: Dawn_

"So, you're the Destroyer?" Dawn asked skeptically, eying him in the way that made Connor feel very, very small. "You don't look scary."

"Hey, I'm scary!" Connor protested, waving his arms frantically. "I'm plenty scary. I'm a scary guy."

"I don't know, I expected more."

Connor wasn't really sure what he had expected, the only thing he knew about this place was that it was some center for heroes, if you could even call it that. The only thing Angel has said about it was a letter mailed to him saying 'If you want to save the world', with an address under it and a ticket to Rome enclosed. Since school was over for summer (not to mention destroyed in the demon war-zone that was currently Los Angeles), Connor thought that now would be a good time to find out what had gone down with the Senior Partners. Angel had apparently won the fight, or at least survived it, and besides, Connor was more than ready for a little action. College was boring.

"So, um, is my dad here? I'm guessing he told you guys about me."

"Yeah," Dawn said in a flippant way, staring at her nails and purposely blocking the door, "he told us. You were pretty cuckoo. But he's not here right now."

Connor was a bit surprised at that. "Really? Where is he?"

"Somewhere having sex with my sister, probably."

Gross. Connor didn't need to hear that.

"Oh, well..." Connor shifted his feet and glanced up at her, hoisting his bag higher over his shoulder. "Do you think I could come in? I want to help save the world."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Pssh, yeah, who doesn't, nowadays?" But she moves over and gives him enough space, and when he passes she grabs one of his bags with ease and drags it to the stairs. When he drops the rest of his stuff there he looks up and their eyes meet, and he notices that they're almost the same height, since he's rather short for a boy and she's rather tall for a girl but not in the awkward sort of way, and her eyes were very blue.

Strange. Connor had expected them to be green.

"Your room is upstairs, to the left. Oh, and," he stops on his way and looks back down at her, and she gives him a big smile and there's no hostility there, just a pretty girl with a heart of steel and cherry lip gloss. "My name's Dawn."

"Yeah," Connor murmurs, "it probably is."

--

"One time, I set fire to my room!"

"I sunk my dad to the bottom of the ocean!"

"I brought my mom back from the dead!"

"I killed mine!"

"My blood opened a portal to a hell dimension and my sister had to jump in to close it!"

"I punched my daughter's head in!"

"I grew up on a Hellmouth!" Dawn cried triumphantly.

"I grew up in Hell!" Connor countered, before adding, "AND, I did a keg-stand once and lasted ten minutes!"

Dawn smirked. "Twelve."

"...I think I'm in love with you."

--

One night, Connor and Dawn sit under the covers in Dawn's bed and show off their battle scars.

"The cuts were right here," Dawn says, showing him the scars on her abdomen where the demon had cut her to open the portal for Glory. They were tiny things, really, barely big enough to cause enough blood to open anything. Opening portals required a lot of blood. Connor had needed to drain every demon he had fought for three months before he had gotten out of Quortoth. "They bled for a long time, we didn't think they would ever stop. I woke up that night and the whole bottom sheet of my bed was covered in blood, and I thought a portal was going to open up right there and suck me in."

Connor nods his head before leaning over and pushing away the hair that hung to the side of his face. "Here's where my dad slit my throat."

"Oh, wow," Dawn murmurs, shining the flashlight on the wound and running her hand over it. "So, did it hurt? I mean, do you remember at all, since you got your memories back?" Connor shook his head. He didn't remember dying.

"He said it actually took about six minutes. He said... he held me." Connor doesn't realize that his voice is trembling until Dawn's hand goes to his cheek, and the flashlight is pointed up toward her face and Connor feels a sinking in the pit of his stomach. "I used to have this really cool necklace thing," he starts, to change the conversation, "made from a bunch of teeth I ripped from the demons I killed in Quortoth."

"Do you think I could ever send you back?" Dawn whispers suddenly, and in this light her eyes do actually look green, and Connor knows that no matter how beautiful and terrible she looks now, it can't even compare to how beautiful and terrible she must have looked back when she was nothing but a glowing ball of energy.

--

They have their own cereal box with their names written across it. Since the house was overrun by more than twenty or so people at a time, if you wanted food to stick around for more than a day, you needed to put your name on it. Dawn taught him that.

"Do you like Lucky Charms?" She asks when she's making breakfast for them. Connor pulls himself out of his reverie; currently, he was wondering where the hell Angel was, because he'd been here for nearly two weeks and he hadn't seen hide nor hair of him or Buffy.

"Yeah, I do," Connor answers, but then he remembers something. "Actually, do you know what's funny? I've never actually eaten them. I ate them all the time when I was a kid, but I've never actually eaten them." Dawn looks sadly at him with more than a little knowing in her eyes, and she pulls an orange bowl out of the cabinet for him and puts it on the table.

"It's okay, Connor," she says and Connor looks up at her with puppy eyes, and she smiles. "My memories are all fake, too."

--

Apparently, Buffy and Angel had run into some sort of trouble in Romania, and Connor decides to go help them. He was, after all, here to help save the world.

He doesn't want to look Dawn in the eyes when he packs, though.

Instead, he presses her body into the piles of his clothes that are strewn across his bed, and she tugs on hair that is the same shade as hers and when their eyes meet, it's like two oceans crashing together, and Connor doesn't think that he'll ever love anyone quite as much as he loves her, because she was the only one who could ever understand him.

It's almost like fucking himself.

After it's over and his bags are by the door, and she watches him go with sad almost-but-not-green eyes, and he can still taste the cherry lip gloss when she comes to hug him goodbye. "You know," she whispers, holding him tighter as the night pressed in around them, "Rome can be home for you."

And Connor really wishes that he could believe that.

--

(A/N)

read and review. :)


	3. Buffy

**Four Women Connor Never Had, and One That He Did**

_Chapter Three: Buffy_

There are two different sections of Heaven, Buffy soon finds out. There's the section that she is in, called The Returns, which holds the spirits of the people who have died of gunshot wounds and encephalitis and Giant Hell Portals and basically anything else that can make a heart stop. Then, there's the part roughly known as The Unsent, which encompasses all of the unborn children of the world. She's fascinated by this section the most (which isn't that odd, because Heaven was a pretty boring place once you got right down to it), and it's there that she first sees him.

He's seated upon a stretch of cumulonimbus, and his sneakers are dirty and his hair is floppy and he's laughing at the swirling mass of colors at his feet. As strange as this part of Heaven was to her, Buffy knows enough about it to know that the Unsent usually spent most of their time watching their future lives unfold, much like how the Returns spent most of their time watching the Living. She also knows that the Unsent can change their appearence to any stage of their future life, from toddlers to teenagers to their elderly selves, and they never stay the same for long.

Which is why his silence and his stillness is so strange to her.

Buffy drifts next to him for a while before seating herself, watching the colors in his face change as the scenes of his life unfold before him. "Are you excited?" she asks, and when he turns his head to her she swears she sees rainbows in his eyes. The unspoilt potential of a child is a beautiful thing.

He shrugs a little as the colors swirl brighter and then harsher, and he suddenly laughs and points into them. "Did you see that?" he asks, eyes wide and smile wider; Buffy can count all of his teeth. "That was awesome." But when Buffy looks, all she sees is static.

"I don't think I'm meant to see your life. It is yours, after all." She can't help but be a little moody about it, though. Heaven was a snooze. He shrugs again and turns his attention away, but not before saying the truest words Buffy has ever heard before, both in her life and in her death.

"Prophecies are a bitch, aren't they?"

Buffy almost laughs at this. "Yeah, they really are." She watches him for a little while longer, watching him watching himself, and she can see the rainbows in his eyes growing brighter and stretching over his face and soon the whole place is full of rainbows, but that's really nothing new. It was Heaven, after all. She feels a bit of regret at leaving, because The Returns always had a sort of bitterness about them, but the Unsent... what did they have to feel bitter about? They had their whole lives ahead of themselves, after all.

And five months later, when Buffy is clawing her way out of her own coffin and choking on grave dirt, she swears she hears a baby crying.

--

She dreams about him sometime later, when her basement is flooded.

"Isn't it wet down there?" she asks, sitting down on her basement steps and propping her chin up with the palm of one delicate-looking hand. Delicate-looking was the key, there. Buffy could snap a grown man in half.

He's standing in the (ocean)water below, and Buffy can't remember her basement being so big. And she certainly doesn't remember the giant wooden box in the middle of it.

"Yeah, it is," he answers, and wrinkles his nose. "Did you know it was flooded like this?"

"I had an idea," she murmurs. He nods at that like it made complete sense, and when he turns around to glance at the bluffs surrounding them, Buffy starts to realize that this is more than a dream.

"My father told me about this place," he begins wistfully, as Buffy's eyes fall to the huge box in the middle of her basement. The huge box that looks like it could fit a full grown man. Or full grown demon, if you want to put it lightly. "He never said it was so..."

"Flooded?" Buffy offers.

"Empty." he responds, and his eyes agree.

"Is your father here?" She asks him, and she's really starting to wonder what the hell that box was doing in the middle of her ocean. The boy glances halfheartedly over his shoulder at it before shrugging.

"Technically, neither of us are here," he states, looking her square in the eyes, and the rainbows are brighter now. "Because I think one of us is dreaming."

"Well," Buffy begins cheerily, placing her delicate-looking man-breaking hands on her knees and rising up to her full height. "I really hope it's me, because God knows I can't afford to fix this baseme-"

Buffy's alarm clock goes off at that moment and she's jerked out of sleep, and she realizes that she woke up again today, and wonders why the unshed tears in the back of her throat taste so much like salt water.

--

Nearly a year later, Buffy's dreams mostly involve a bunch of pretty girls being hacked down by creepy men with robes and no eyes. She tries to relay them to Willow the best she can so that Willow can look into them, and sometimes she finds herself rambling. She's telling Willow about the girl in her dream that was being chased through the streets, and how she had felt the growing horror that this girl had already been killed and she was just looking at her last moments on Earth, and she finds herself saying, "-And of course Connor was there, and Connor said..."

"Connor?" Willow interjects, looking downright confused, and for good reason. "Who's Connor? And what did he say?"

"I... don't remember," Buffy admits, and she's startled to realize that she just answered both of Willow's questions.

--

"Apocalypses really aren't what they're made out to be, you know?" Buffy says cheerily, scratching off her peeling pink nail polish. "I mean, one minute you're in the middle of a battle and then it's all over. You would have thought they would have put up more of a fight. Weren't they supposed to be the most evil law firm in the world or something?"

Connor simply smiles and tightens the dynamite around her waist.

Buffy can't help but realize that this dream was a lot more real than the others were. Her nail polish was peeling like it was when she had gone to sleep, and the sobs and whimpers coming from the hostages around them sounded a bit close for comfort. Connor didn't seem worried, though, so Buffy keeps her mouth shut, and simply watches him as he straps the rolls of dynamite to himself, now.

_You recognize him as your inner child, Buffy_, Giles had said to her so long ago, when he found out about her dreams. _You listen to him and you tolerate him because, in your mind, you ARE him. And the fact that he's a boy is simply because you haven't had a proper father figure. That part is my fault, I'm afraid_. Giles sighed at that and Buffy scratched her head, because that didn't sound like her at all. But Giles had been certain and had hugged her and promised that he would always be there for her, so Buffy put it to the back of her mind. She still didn't think that her inner child was some weird kid with floppy hair, though.

_He's your spirit guide! _Willow had announced at breakfast one morning, in typical Willow-fashion; smug eyes and a goofy smile. Buffy had simply blinked at her over her Cheerios. _He was sent to protect you and to insight his wisdom on to you! Buffy, you need to tell me everything. He has to be here for a reason_. Buffy had meant to tell her that Connor had done a whole lot of nothing in her dreams and the only thing that he was doing was keeping her up at night, but her mouth had been full and by the time she had swallowed Willow was already out the door, eager to go tell Giles of her theory.

_The kid sounds like a loser_, was all the Xander said. _Now, if Spiderman starts talking to you through your dreams, then you'd better listen to him. He knows what he's talking about_.

As Buffy stares at Connor now, she doesn't see him as her inner child, or her spirit guide. And he's not much of a superhero, either. She can remember dreams of him when he was right there, talking to her, or dreams of him when he was simply in the backdrop. Sometimes, his hair in blond in her dreams, or he's losing his soul or he's flying away on a helicopter. Connor reminds her a lot of the other men in her life; his face was young, his eyes were old, and his hair was annoying.

And when Connor looks up at her after hooking up the dynamite, the rainbows are gone from his eyes. _The last moments of someone's life_. Buffy starts to feel that old familiar sense of dread.

"Is there something wrong?" Buffy asks then, but it's a stupid question. Of course there was something wrong. Buffy hates it when people ask her that question. Connor looks thoughtful for a moment before shrugging.

"Teenagers are weird," he says softly, and his bangs fall forward and cover his eyes. "Unresolved daddy issues, you know how it is. Everyone's got them. Probably because I was never held enough as a baby." There's a brief flash of Angel, standing in the snow on Christmas Eve. Buffy wonders why she's thinking of Angel at a time like this. "But don't worry about it," Connor continues, and his face changes and he's grimacing and he turns his head, settling his eyes on something behind her. "It's all baggage. In the end, it all just goes away."

"Connor, I think we should-" but Buffy never gets to say what Connor should do because she's being shaken awake by a pair of cold hands, and when her eyes fly open she's met with a pair of angry brown ones.

"Buffy," Angel almost growls out the words, and she wonders for a brief moment if Angel lost his soul again, but the pain written across his face is too apparent. "How do you know about Connor?"

"Why, do you know the kid?" Buffy asks almost irritatedly, shrugging Angel's hands off of her shoulders and reaching under the bed to grab her top.

"Yeah," Angel's voice sounds tight-lipped at this. "Yeah, I knew him."

"Well, tell him to stay his crazy ass out of my dreams." Buffy says, pulling her shirt on and now directing her attention to finding her pants, which had seemingly disappeared sometime during the night. "I mean, honestly. There's only so much talk about daddy issues and prophecies and dragging boxes around my basement and blowing people up that someone can take-"

"Buffy," Angel interrupts, "Connor's dead."

And Buffy thinks, _Oh, big surprise there_.

--

She decides to go and visit his grave, just to make sure that he's still in it.

--

(A/N)

time lines are a bit wonky in this one, but I think it all mostly happened at similar times. maybe. hopefully.


	4. Faith

**Four Women Connor Never Had, and One That He Did**

_Chapter Four: Faith_

_The boy sure is a pistol,_ Faith thinks in the back of some alley, when they fuck for the first time. Connor is clumsy and unsure, but when he slams her against the dirty brick wall, all Faith can think about is years of steel bars and blue jumpsuits and pissing in front of dozens of girls. So it's no wonder, really, that she all but jumps on the first thing with a penis. Even if that 'thing' happens to be Angel's sorta-demon-but-not-quite son, with the floppy hair and the vicious eyes.

He sorta had that look that dogs get when you kicked them one too many times. Like they're begging to be pet, but if you got too close they'd have your hand for supper. Dogs turn mean, after a while. Faith and Connor are living proof that kids turn mean after a while, too.

Connor's hands fumble at the buttons on her jeans and Faith almost rolls her eyes, but she's a bit desperate at the moment. "Come on, Junior," she says even as his face scrunches up in frustration. "Can't you even treat a girl to a good time?"

"Shut _up_," he rasps and his mouth is on hers, blunt teeth and clumsy tongue, like he's eating an ice cream cone. As if he even knows what an ice cream cone is. His lips are softer than a girl's.

Connor finally gets annoyed at button-undoing and jeans in general and ends up ripping Faith's right down the middle, sending the accursed button skittering down the alleyway. "Those are the only jeans I _have_, asshole," Faith seethes, and wants to pummel that self-satisfied smirk right off his face. She retaliates by switching their positions and shoving him against the wall, and when her hand goes to his crotch, Connor slams the back of his head so hard on the bricks behind him that Faith thinks he's going to pass out. He moans instead and Faith decides that his jeans are already too worn out and patched up for Connor to really care if they're torn again, and opts for the shirt instead. At the sound of ripping fabric, Connor frowns.

"Bitch," he manages to ground out before Faith grips him harder, and then he only whimpers.

"Listen, kid," Faith says, because she's had enough of this bullshitting around. This was like when she had fucked Xander. "I'm not going to do all the steering tonight. So get your ass in gear, or I walk." She studies him a moment longer. "Have you even done this before?"

Connor's face is all petulant teenager when he shoves her to the ground, narrowly missing a couple of grimy trashcans. "Of course I have," he answers roughly, shedding her of her ripped jeans. "Once." And Faith groans, because it was _exactly_ like when she had fucked Xander. But then again, Xander wasn't Super Boy.

Faith has a funny feeling that Connor's going to be a crier. Either that, or he's going to get all cuddly and follow her around like a lost puppy after sex, which was sometimes worst. She could tell when people were criers and when people were the cuddly lost-puppy types, because those were usually the people she kicked out the second they were done putting it to her. Xander had been a lost puppy, his big doe eyes hopeful right up until the time that Faith slammed the motel door right in his face. Faith had always been positive that Angel was a crier, until the inevitable time that he loses his soul. Angelus wasn't a crier. Angelus was a fucker.

"Don't get all weepy on me now, kid," Faith says seductively, stretching her arms over her head. "Time is of the essence. Angelus isn't going to track himself, you know."

"I know," he answers and Faith can almost hear the whine in it, and Connor hurriedly goes to unclasp his ragged jeans. _Thank god I didn't wear a bra,_ Faith thinks, wildly. _We'd have been here all day._ When Connor finally gets them undone and they're both finally pants-less (always a bonus for sexual intercourse, Faith's inner Sunnydaler snickers at that), Faith looks up to see Connor gazing at her in the oddest way.

"I'm going to enter you, now," he says, and his voice sounds clipped and uncertain. Faith almost rolls her eyes at his stupid way of talking but instead she sighs, because the puppy dog eyes weren't suppose to be here this early.

"You kiss your momma with that mouth?" She jokes, halfheartedly.

"No," he answers. "She's dead." And Faith can only roll her eyes and think, _Welcome to the club._

--

Afterwards, when Connor lays curls against her and she absentmindedly watches his chest rise and fall, Faith wonders how the hell she got into this mess. She blames it on the fact that Connor's very young, and it's too close to his first time for him not to form an emotional attachment, and it's too far from Faith's first time for her to even consider one. It still makes her feel like shit, though.

She had enough sense to have put their clothes back on them before Connor had fallen asleep, thankfully. She didn't think laying naked in a filthy alleyway was such a good idea. After she had tugged Connor's pants back onto his hips (like dressing a damn baby, no cooperation) and pulled her ruined ones back on (had to steal Connor's belt just to keep them up, the psycho had ripped clean through the zipper), Connor had asked Faith if she would lay there with him, for awhile. She had almost refused, but Connor had looked so tired and so hopeful, and Faith had thought that at least one of them should be comforted that night.

After hours of hearing nothing but the sound of Connor's steady breathing, Faith starts to notice how Connor's eyes flutter when he's sleeping, and how she can circle her thumb and middle finger around Connor's wrist, and that when Connor dreams, he whimpers something that sounds like _mom_ and sighs something that sounds like _home_. And apparently, as Faith notices, he never combs his hair.

But she knows that she can't let him dream for much longer because the sun's coming up, or at least it should be at this time, and they need to get back to the Hyperion and tell the gang that they couldn't find Angelus because he was too cunning and too quick, not because they were too busy fucking in an alley to give a piss about him.

"Wake up, Sleepy Jean," Faith says, and she shakes Connor roughly. "Time to rise and shine."

"Is it morning?" Connor murmurs, and Faith glances up at the dark sky.

"Yeah," she says, more than a little bitterly. "Yeah, it's morning." She watches him rub the sleep from his eyes and she feels like she should say something about last night, something that will make everything right, and instead she says; "You're a real demon in the sack, you know that?"

"I'm not a demon," Connor says defensively, crossing his arms in front of his ruined shirt. Faith shrugs and starts down the alley, heading towards the street.

"Whatever you say, kid," she laughs, "but we were going at it all night. I didn't think you'd be able to keep up with me."

"I'm not a _demon_," he repeats, and Faith can hear the sound of his heavy boots hitting the ground as he follows her out of the alley. _Lost puppy my ass,_ Faith thinks.

"Whatever. We just need to find your dad, and soon," she says conversationally, "so that I can get my ass out of this crazy city."

"Where will you go?" Connor asks suddenly, and the sound of his footsteps stop and Faith turns around to see him watching her with that same odd expression on his face, as if he was looking at something that he didn't exactly expect. Like when you step through a door to a basement, and find out the stairs are broken. You can never stop yourself in time. "Home?"

Faith doesn't have to think very long on what he was looking for. "Listen, kid," she says softly, and if they weren't a million miles apart right now, Faith would have taken his hand. "People like us don't have homes to go to."

--

In the light of the Hyperion lobby, Faith can make out the scratches on Connor's neck and the bruises on his wrists, and she hopes that the others pass it off as a vampire attack.

--

(A/N)

set during season 4, when Faith returns to help capture Angelus. as if you couldn't tell.


End file.
